Ross Poldark (49 page)

Verity had subsided on a stool, a tray with glasses on the floor beside her. Against a background of blue moreen curtains, she sat with hands clasped about her knees, her head up and showing the line of her throat above its lace fichu. Her face in its repose reminded one of the younger Verity of four years ago. Next to her Francis lolled in a chair, his eyes half closed, but listening; and beside him Aunt Agatha chewed meditatively, a dribble of saliva at the corner of her mouth, listening too but hearing nothing. In her finery sharply different from the old lady, but having something strangely in common with her in the vitality
of her manner, was Ruth Treneglos. One felt that she might be no beauty but that she too would take some killing off when the time came.

Next to her was Demelza, who had just finished her third glass of port and was feeling better every minute; and beyond her Ross stood, a little withdrawn, glancing now and then from one to another of the company with his unquiet eyes. John Treneglos was half listening to the music, half goggling at Demelza, who seemed to have a peculiar fascination for him.

The music came to a stop, and Elizabeth leaned back, smiling at Ross. Applause was on a quieter note than could have been expected ten minutes ago. The harp music had touched at something more fundamental than their high spirits. It had spoken not of Christmas jollity and fun but of love and sorrow, of human life, its strange beginning and its inevitable end.

“Superb!” declared George. “We were more than repaid for a ride twenty times as long. Elizabeth, you pluck at my heartstrings.”

“Elizabeth,” said Verity. “Play me that
canzonetta
as an encore, please. I love it.”

“It is not good unless it is sung.”

“Yes, yes, it is. Play it as you played it last Sunday night.”

Silence fell again. Elizabeth played something very short by Mozart and then a canzonetta by Haydn.

There was silence when this was over before anyone spoke.

“It is my favourite,” said Verity. “I cannot hear it often enough.”

“They’re all my favourites,” said George. “And played like an angel. One more, I beg you.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “It is Demelza's turn. She will sing for us now.”

“After that I could not,” said Demelza, whom the last piece and the strong wine had much affected. “I was praying to God you had forgotten me.”

Everyone laughed.

“We must hear this and go,” said Ruth with an eye on her husband. “Please, Mistress Poldark, overcome your modesty and satisfy us as to your attainments. We are all agog.”

Demelza's eyes met those of the other girl and saw in them a challenge. She rose to it. The port had given her Dutch courage.

“Well—”

With mixed feelings Ross saw her walk across to the harp and sit down at the seat Elizabeth had left. She could not play a note on the instrument, but the instinct was sound which persuaded her to take up this position; the others were
grouped round it to listen and she was saved the awkwardness of standing with nothing to do with her hands. But ten minutes ago was the time when she should have sung, when everyone was jolly and prepared to join in. Elizabeth's cultured, delicate playing had changed the atmosphere. The anticlimax would be certain.

Demelza settled herself comfortably, straightening her back, and plucked at a string with her finger. The note it gave out was pleasing and reassuring. Contrast with Eliza beth: gone was the halo and in its place the dark crown of humanity.

She looked at Ross; in her eyes was a demon of mischief. She began to sing.

Her slightly husky voice, almost contralto, an imperceptible fraction off the note, and sweet-toned, made no effort to impress by volume; rather, it seemed to confide as a personal message what it had to say.

I d’ pluck a fair rose for my love;

I d’ pluck a red rose blowing.

Love's in my heart a-trying so to prove

What your heart's knowing.

I d’ pluck a finger on a thorn,

I d’ pluck a finger bleeding.

Red is my heart a-wounded and forlorn

And your heart needing.

I d’ hold a finger to my tongue,

I d’ hold a finger waiting.

My heart is sore until it joins in song

Wi’ your heart mating.

There was a moment's pause, and Demelza coughed to show that she had done. There came murmurs of praise, some of it merely polite but some of it spontaneous.

“Very charming,” said Francis, through half-closed lids.

“Egad,” said John Treneglos with a sigh. “I liked that.”

“Egad,” said Demelza, sparkling at him. “I was afeard you might not.”

“A sharp answer, ma’am,” said Treneglos. He was just beginning to realize why Ross had committed the solecism of marrying his kitchenmaid. “Have you any more of the same?”

“Songs or answers, sir?” asked Demelza.

“I have not heard that piece before,” said Elizabeth. “I am much taken with it.”

“Songs, I meant, chit,” said Treneglos, putting his feet up. “I know you have the answers.”

“John,” said his wife. “It is time we were going.”

“I am comfortable here. Thank you, Verity. A good body this port has, Francis. When did you get it?”

“Trencrom's firm. Their stuff has been less good of late. I must make a change.”

“I bought some passable port the other day,” said George. “Regrettably tax had been paid and it ran me in for near on three guineas for thirteen quart bottles.”

Francis raised an ironical eyebrow. George was a good friend and an indulgent creditor, but he could not refrain from bringing into a conversation the price he had paid for things. It was almost the only sign left of his origins.

“How do you contrive for servants now, Elizabeth?” Ruth asked, her voice carrying. “I have the utmost difficulty. Mama was saying this morning that there was really no satisfying ’em. The young generation, she was saying, have such
ideas
, always wishing to rise above their station.”

“One more song, Demelza please,” Verity interposed. “What was that you were wont to play when I stayed with you? You remember, the seiner's song.”

“I like them all,” said John. “Damme, I had no idea we was in such gifted company.”

Demelza drained her newly filled glass. Her fingers went over the strings of the harp and made a surprising sound.

“I have another,” she said gently. She looked at Ross a moment, then at Treneglos from under her lashes. The wine she had drunk had lit up her eyes.

She began to sing, very low but very clear.

I suspicioned she was pretty

I suspicioned she was wed,

My father telled me twas against the law.

I saw that she was coxy,

No loving here by proxy,

As pretty a piece of mischief as never I saw.

With no intentions meaning

I called at candleteening: All's fair they say in love as well as war.

My good intentions dropped me,

No father's warning stopped me,

As pretty a piece of mischief as never I saw.

Here she paused, then opened her eyes for a second at John Treneglos before she sang the last verse.

The nest was warm around us,

No spouse came home and found us,

Our youth it was as sweet as it was raw.

And now the cuckoo's homing

A-tired of his roaming.

As pretty a piece of mischief as never I saw.

John Treneglos roared and slapped his thighs. Demelza helped herself to another glass of port.

“Bravo!” said George. “I like that song. It has a pleasant tripping sound. Well sung, indeed!”

Ruth rose. “Come, John. It will be tomorrow before we reach home.”

“Nonsense, my dear.” John tugged at the fob attached to his chronometer, but the watch would not come out of his deep pocket. “Has anyone the time? It cannot be ten yet.”

“You did not like my song, ma’am?” Demelza asked, addressing Ruth.

Ruth's lips moved a fraction. “Indeed, yes. I found it most enlightening.”

“It is the half after nine,” said Warleggan.

“Indeed, ma’am,” said Demelza. “I am surprised you d’ need enlightening on such a matter.”

Ruth went white at the nostrils. It is to be doubted whether Demelza understood the full flavour of her remark. But with five large glasses of port inside her, she was not given to weighing the pros and cons of a retort before she made it. She felt Ross come up behind her, his hand touch her arm.

“It was not of the matter I was speaking.” Ruth's gaze went past her. “May I congratulate you, Ross, on a wife so very skilled in all the arts of entertainment.”

“Not skilled,” said Ross, squeezing Demelza's arm, “but a very quick learner.”

“The choice of tutor means so much, does it not?”

“Oh yes,” agreed Demelza. “Ross is so kind he could charm the sourest of us into a show o’ manners.”

Ruth patted her arm. She had the opening she wanted. “I don’t think you are quite the best judge of that yet, my dear.”

Demelza looked at her and nodded. “No. Mebbe I should have said all but the sourest.”

Before the exchange became still more deadly, Verity interposed. The visitors were moving off. Even John was at last levered from his chair. They all drifted out into the hall.

Amid much laughter and last-minute talk, cloaks were put on and Ruth changed her delicate slippers for buckle riding shoes. Her new-fashioned riding cloak had to be admired. A full half hour passed while affectionate good byes and seasonal wishes were given and received, jokes made and replied to. At last, to the clop and clatter of hoofs, the party moved off down the drive, and the big door banged. The Poldarks were alone again.

A
LL THINGS REVIEWED, IT HAD BEEN DEMELZA'S EVENING. SHE HAD COME through a searching test with quite remarkable success. The fact that the success was due partly to nausea at the dinner table and partly to five glasses of port at a crucial stage of the evening was known only to her and she kept it to herself.

As they said good night to their relatives two hours later and mounted the broad portrait-hung stairs, Ross was conscious of this new side of her nature which his wife had shown. All through the evening surprise had mingled with his inner amusement: Demelza's charm, almost beauty, in her new and fashionable dress; the impression she had created; her quiet unassuming dignity over the dinner, when he had expected her to be nervous and stiff or boisterous and hungry. Demelza among the unexpected arrivals, giving as good as she got without compromising her dignity, singing those saucy songs in her low, husky voice with its soft native burr. Demelza flirting with John Treneglos under Ruth's very nose—under Ross's own too for that matter.

Demelza being kept with difficulty and tact away from the port when the visitors had gone. (While they were at limited loo, which the girl could not play, he had watched her edge round the room and pour herself out a couple of glasses on the sly.) Demelza now mounting the broad stairs sedately beside him, erect and unruffled in her mauve and apple-green silk, from which emerged her strong slender neck and shoulders like the white inner heart of a flower.

Demelza more detached from him than he had ever known her. Tonight he had withdrawn from her, had seen her with a new eye. Here against the background, which was strange to her but which for him had the most definite of associations and standards, she had proved herself and was not found wanting. He was not sorry now that he had come. He remembered Elizabeth's words: “You must take her into society and bring her out.” Even that might not be impossible if she wished it. A new life might be opening for them both. He felt pleased and stimulated and proud of the developing character of his young wife.

His young wife hiccupped as they reached their bed room. She too was feeling different from what she had ever felt before. She felt like a jug of fermenting cider, full of bubbles and air, lightheaded, bilious, and as uninterested in sleep as Ross. She gazed round the handsome room with its cream-and-pink flock paper and its brocaded curtains.

“Ross,” she said. “I wish those birds was not so spotty. Missel thrushes was never so spotty as they. If they wish to paint spots on birds on curtains, why don’t they paint the spots the right colour? No bird ever had pink spots. Nor no bird was ever as spotty as they.”

She leaned against Ross, who leaned back against the door he had just closed and patted her cheek.

“You’re tipsy, child.”

“Indeed I’m not.” She regained her balance and walked with cool dignity across the room. She sat heavily in a chair before the fire and kicked off her shoes. Ross lit the rest of the candles from the one he carried and after an interval they burned up, lighting the room.

Demelza sat there, her arms behind her head, her toes stretched towards the fire while Ross slowly undressed. They exchanged a casual word from time to time, laughed together over Ross's account of Treneglos's antics with the spinning wheel; Demelza questioned him about Ruth, about the Teagues, about George Warleggan. Their voices were low and warm and confidential. This was the intimacy of pure companionship.

The house had fallen quiet about them. Although they were not sleepy, the pleasant warmth and comfort turned their senses imperceptibly towards sleep. Ross had a moment of unspoiled satisfaction. He received love and gave it in equal and generous measure. Their relationship at that moment had no flaw.